... , and reports on the surveillance of the Berlin Alternative List. Two articles reprinted from CAIB and National Reporter cover the CIA and heroin and American war plans for Europe, while in the first parts of two longer articles, Rolf Gossner analyses the disappearing distinction between police and Verfassungsschutz (Germany's MI5), and Michael Opperskalski traces the background to Irangate. He shows America's failure to spot the storm to the subsequent reinforcement of the CIA contingent following a twin-track policy of supporting anti-Khomeini exile groups outside Iran while building up agent networks within the first post-revolutionary government of Medhi Basargan. They succeeded in winning over Bani Sadr (President of Iran), Amir Entesam (Deputy Prime Minister) and ...

... apparently all these and more. An inveterate deal maker, Ghorbanifar survived by offering his services to any intelligence agency that served his needs. As a pre-revolution informant for the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, Ghorbanifar enjoyed 'access to Iranian underworld characters of various illicit hues', according to a CIA report.(3) A preliminary study of Irangate issued in 1987 by the Senate Intelligence Committee observed that Ghorbanifar had once offered to swap intelligence on Iran for protection of the 'drug smuggling activities' of several of his close associates.(4) Although George protested to CIA Director William Casey that he was 'not going to run this guy', North liked Ghorbanifar's 'neat idea' of ...

... Issue 16 French vendetta: from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages deal David Teacher For some time, the world's secret services have been making use of loose structures parallel to the official clandestine hierarchies for their more controversial activities. Fred Holroyd's revelations have shown how the British state employed Loyalist paramilitaries for kidnap and assassination operations in Eire, whilst the Irangate hearings have exposed what is, so far, the classic example of a parallel secret service, in which the 'invisible government' makes use of politically reliable personnel reporting direct to the top for operations which cannot be entrusted to the official agency for reasons of confidentiality, deniability or political accountability. The essential features of such parallel services- ...

... ' but argues that'[a] deep political system or process is one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society. In popular terms, collusive secrecy and law-breaking are part of how the deep political system works.'(6) Nobody who has witnessed Watergate, Irangate, Kincora, the Rainbow Warrior murders, Stalker, Colin Wallace, or any of the other significant exposes of the secret state activities of the past 25 years could really dispute this. Which is to say nothing of Scott's main subject, the Kennedy assassination. But there is a difficulty in that the general public has grown weary of ...

... March 1986 Searchlight reported that Paul Masson had been appointed to the International Youth Committee of the ABN and that the Young Monday Club had sent a delegation to the ABN conference, consisting of Masson, David Neil-Smith, A. V. R. Smith and Adrian Lee. 'Split' with the Foundation At the beginning of the investigation into the Irangate scandal, the U.S. parent body ran into serious trouble. Although its role as a lobbyist and fund-raiser for the Contras was well known, the report of the Tower Commission confirmed that the Western Goals Foundation, and Linda Guell, had been an important part of Oliver North's covert machinery for passing money to the Contras. More damaging ...